More Articles

A Louisiana man who was held in solitary confinement for 41 years died yesterday, three days
after a judge overturned his murder conviction and freed him.

Herman Wallace, 71, was known as one of the “Angola Three” at Louisiana’s Angola prison
farm.

He was suffering from advanced liver cancer when he was wheeled out of a prison medical clinic
in St. Gabriel, La., on Tuesday and returned to his native New Orleans.

He died about 7 a.m. yesterday, with family and friends nearby.

“He was happy to have passed away having had the conviction finally overturned,” attorney George
Kendall said.

Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King were dubbed the Angola Three in 1997 when a young law
student discovered that the three black men had been kept in solitary confinement for more than two
decades — Wallace and Woodfox for the longest stretches in history.

Wallace and Woodfox entered the prison in 1971 after being convicted of armed robbery and soon
founded a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party. They organized protests against rape, violence
and inhumane conditions.

In 1972, both men were sent to solitary confinement after being convicted of the stabbing death
of a white prison guard during a prison riot.